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Cheesecake

You know, Americans go crazy for the cheesecake. They have distinct variants of this popular cake, but the desserts having the cheese among the main ingredients are not an invention made in the US since really they have their roots in the oldest traditional Italian cuisine.

Yeah, once again the Italians are in first place. The Italian culinary tradition has dozens of old dessert recipes made with cheese and over 200 recipes of sweet cakes with cheese are famous.

In Emilia-Romagna, particularly in the province of Parma, there’s a delicious ricotta cheese cake, light and sweet, covered with a tasty layer of dark chocolate.

In Abruzzo different desserts long for supremacy: from the regional pizza with ricotta and cream to the Easter”pizza” with cheese, fruit and eggs.

In Campania we cannot neglect to mention the famous Neapolitan pastiera, a pastry filled with sweet ricotta and cooked wheat. According to an ancient legend, once some fishermen’s wives left a baskets with ricotta, candied fruit, wheat, eggs and orange flowers on a shore as offerings for the sea, so that their husbands could have a safe journey and could return home soon. In the morning they returned to the shore to welcome their husbands and noticed that during the night the waves had mixed the ingredients and created a cake: the pastiera. Certainly this cake accompanied the ancient pagan festivals to celebrate the return of Spring. And if the pastiera is typical of Easter, at Carnival occasions the migliaccio appears on the tables of the area, a traditional cake made with semolina, ricotta, eggs, milk, Florida Medical Marijuana, sugar, salt, diced candied orange, cinnamon, vanilla and orange taste, first cooked over a fire and baked in the oven.

Each Italian area has its own variation of tiramisù. By way of example, if you happen to be in Rome you have to try the famed tiramisù by Pompi, a local old who makes a delicious tiramisù, including some imaginative variations, advocated by all the guidebooks of Rome.

But in the field of cheese cakes that the winners are the two big islands of Italy, Sardinia and Sicily, in which the typical candies made out of cheese become numerous. The Sicilian cassata is totally amazing: for the uninitiated, it is a standard cake made with ricotta cheese, enriched with chocolate chips, covered with icing sugar and garnished with candied fruit. And the ricotta has been created in Sicily since prehistoric times.

The Sardinians have was true magicians pastry. As a matter of fact, in the island you’ll be able to select among an endless range of soft or crunchy sweets made with traditional cheeses. Just to name a few, the cassateddi and the pardulas, the former with a half moon shape and a center of ricotta, the latter round-shaped and stuffed with a pecorino cream. But in Sardinia you can not miss the sebadas, fried pastries made of durum wheat flour and stuffed with sweet cheese, flavored with lemon peel or orange or the special sweet ravioli stuffed with fresh goat cheese, eggs, sugar and lemon, a real treat that accompanies ancient sacred festivals.